Archive for the ‘Ethan Watters’ Category

Last Sunday I read a tepid NYT Magazine, Ethan Watters precis of his upcoming book: “The americanization of mental illness”. The subject is enormously serious. In sum , it deals with what constitutes and who defines mental illness and how the US psychyatric establishment pushed by the narcopharma are evagelizing MI throughout the world and making, in passing-what else- millions of bucks. This is indeed amazing if one considers that there is a significant fraction of people, right here, that still believe mental illness is a question of will, normally attributed to moral lazyness, and/or the intervention of Satan or related foreign evil spirits. Some would say we are not “in balance” (sic). I have always been dumbfounded by how mental illness is regarded, in US. Being a Bipolar I myself, I have a first hand account what happens to people like me, which is bad. I strongly suggest you get a hold and read (take a read, as said in CNN network..take a read..gimme a break) this article. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html?scp=1&sq=ethan%20watters&st=cse (still havent learned to write “here”). Mr. Watters make some sensible and poignant remarks regrding the ‘breakdown of meaning’ as a hallmark for MI-if I read him well. I bring this forth because the breakdown of meaning, the globalization of MI labels and knowledge, especially about humanness-read neocon-darwinism- are all intertwined, ever so desperately in a period where the lack of meaning elsewhere and evrywhere, is paramount and defines our existence: do I live for….? We desperately, again, seek meaning where it cant be, it cant be. A friend pointed the following idea: Are we a cosmic reality show?(sic). We live in fragmented spirits riding fragmented lives and ending in pieces, scattered. The search for meaning is tantamount to search for unity. Thence, it begs the question: when MI, we stop searching for meaning?